Economist edits President Obama BP cover pic

The New York Times' Media Decoder column has an interesting story about how a cover picture of President Obama was edited by The Economist.
It reports: "It was the ideal metaphor for a politically troubled president.
"There was President Obama on the cover of the June 19 issue of The Economist, standing alone on a Louisiana beach, head down, looking forlornly at the ground.
"The problem was, he was not actually alone. The photograph was just edited to make it look that way.
"The unaltered image, shot on May 28 by a Reuters photographer, Larry Downing, shows Adm. Thad W. Allen of the Coast Guard and Charlotte Randolph, a local parish president, standing alongside the president. But in the image that appeared on The Economist’s cover, Admiral Allen and Ms. Randolph had been scrubbed out, replaced by the blue water of the Gulf of Mexico."

• Emma Duncan, deputy editor of The Economist, responded in an e-mail message: "I was editing the paper the week we ran the image of President Obama with the oil rig in the background. Yes, Charlotte Randolph was edited out of the image (Admiral Allen was removed by the crop). We removed her not to make a political point, but because the presence of an unknown woman would have been puzzling to readers."
• Story via Marc Vallee on twitter